In 40 years, about 2.4 million square kilometres of Arctic sea ice has disappeared

Christopher Michel

THE Arctic is in a death spiral. The top of our world is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet, setting new records for the speed and area of ice melt. We are on track this year to have one of the lowest summer sea ice coverages so far. It is a huge problem, because what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.

What’s more, the Greenland ice sheet, which alone contains enough water to raise global sea levels by 6 metres, is disappearing. The frozen Arctic soil and sediment, or permafrost, is melting, releasing more and more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. This year, vast wildfires in the peatlands of Siberia have blazed for more than a month, and the Arctic warming is playing havoc with weather systems in the northern hemisphere too. But if you prefer to think simply in terms of money, the economic impact of unmitigated Arctic warming by the end of this century was recently estimated to be $67 trillion. As US congressman Jerry McNerney says: “When it comes to the Arctic, we’re in deep shit.”

You’ve heard the slogans: we are living in a time of climate emergency. But it is no good declaring an emergency without summoning help. So here it is: let’s refreeze the Arctic. There are several imaginative ideas to manipulate its climate system to get the ice back. They won’t be cheap or easy, but some researchers argue that the crisis in the north is …